1.2.9-Kingedgmundsroyalmurder
brick!club chapters 9 and 10: of justice, fairness, and silver spoons Yes, I skipped another chapter, but frankly I’m nowhere near smart enough to deal with chapter-long extended metaphors and I’m still behind. Also, chapter 9 is a super snort one, so I’m doing two at once. And then I’ll be caught up just in time to fall behind again, since I’m going out of town again this coming weekend. (And this time there will definitely be limited to zero internet. On the other hand I should be less exhausted the whole time, so I’ll at least stay caught up on the reading if not the write ups.) Anyway. Chapter 9. I don’t know how much I have to say about chapter 9 actually. We continue the theme of Jean Valjean hating everything and framing things through the lens of justice and absolute right and wrong. It’s wrong that he should get paid less than the others and he knows it. It’s wrong that he should be judged by the color of his passport rather than his actual work and he knows that too. He thinks of things in terms of justice and of theft, both things with which he is well accustomed. But it seems kind of detached for someone who claims to be so filled with hate. It’s not wrong because he wants more money, it’s wrong because it isn’t fair. You get the feeling that he would be just as upset if that happened to someone else. Maybe I’m just influenced by having spent so much time with the Bishop, but it seems like an impersonal kind of anger, more at the systemic failures in general than anything personal (though obviously from those systemic failures come personal injustice). Also the French version says he was paid 25 sous for his work in Grasse. I’m not sure why all the English versions are saying fifteen. (Unless there are different versions in French too? I don’t actually know if there are or not.) Moving on to chapter ten, we return to our narrative present and find Jean Valjean waking in the middle of the night due to being too comfortable. I can totally see how a man used to sleeping on wood for nearly 20 years would have a hard time adjusting to a proper mattress, even one that I suspect is probably actually fairly hard (can’t see the Bishop splurging on a good mattress even for the guest bed). So Valjean has woken and can’t go back to sleep, which is something I totally empathize with. So he lies there in his bed and thinks of silver. This is a surprise to no one. I’m not sure if he is considering the actual morality behind taking them, honestly. As far as I can tell his thoughts are basically, “shiny! expensive! I need money!” I’m still not getting hatred of mankind, but I am getting detachment and self-centeredness. Plus there’s a hint of unfairness that these things are worth more than nineteen years of hard labor. "Il est vrai qu’il eût gagné davantage si l’''administration'' ne l’avait pas volé.” (It’s true that he would have earned more if the administration hadn’t robbed him.) Those are not my italics. Those are Hugo’s italics. What with those and the earlier scare quotes I’m thinking that Hugo may have spoken a kind of proto-internet. (I’m also remembering a Pratchett quote from one of the Night Watch books where the antagonist character, a fervent royalist, thinks in increasingly desperate italics and Pratchett remarks that people who think in italics are the most dangerous kind.) "Il resta un certain temps rêveur dans cette attitude qui eût eu quelque chose de sinistre pour quelqu’un qui l’eût aperçu ainsi dans cette ombre, seul éveillé dans la maison endormie." (He stayed for a time dreaming in this posture which would have had something sinister for someone catching a glimpse of him in the shadows, only person awake in the sleeping house.) I’m really liking the juxtaposition between Valjean’s fearsome exterior and his methodical, mostly gentle nature. Yes, he’s currently considering more theft, but he’s not really being violent about it, nor has he really shown any signs of being actively violent before now, for all that he’s threatened it. Do we care about Brevet and his single suspender? Did I miss the importance of that? Is it Hugo being overly thorough? So he’s got a sharp, pointy piece of metal. This seems to run counter to the note on his passport marking him as extremely dangerous. Could it be that he’s being set up to fail and thus go back to providing cheap labor to the state? (That was rhetorical. Frankly I find that scenario extremely likely, or at least not unwelcome by those in power.) And the chapter ends with him pushing open the Bishop’s unlocked door. Cliffhanger! Commentary Pilferingapples Well it’s been nice to have your commentary back even for a little while! I also feel like Valjean’s anger is a somewhat impersonal thing, but more because he’s so totally dissociated from himself at this point. More on that in his second post-prison robbery, really, because I really love that scene and want to talk about it for ages when I get the chance!